In foreign affairs, 2010 was the year of being stumped. Everywhere you look, Washington points out how difficult the various policy options on the menu are, rather than devising ways to solve them.
What to do about North Korea’s aggression? We’re stumped.
How about Iran’s ever quickening nuclear dash? Dunno.
Do we win the Afghanistan-Pakistan war or reduce our presence there? It’s too complex.
Iraq? We’re leaving by next year regardless of the consequences — which we’re oblivious to.
Palestinian-Israeli peace? The disputes have become too intractable for us to deal with.
Lebanon? Ditto — and anyway it isn’t really all that important (at least not until the next war).
What can we do about China’s rise as an economic competitor and potential military foe? You guessed it. We’re stumped.
Thank God we were able to ratify New START during this month’s lame-duck Senate session. Now a treaty that (arguably) resolved some of the most vexing issues that employed our brightest minds at the height of the Cold War is in effect. Terrific. Also, such treaties endear President Obama to the self-described “international community.” (He likes to consult and coordinate with allies, and at times with foes, before making any bold decision on the global stage.)
Yes, as a result of such a policy style, we got to impose much tighter sanctions on Iran than ever before. But then again, as even administration insiders will admit, sanctions won’t stop Tehran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons — a policy that the mullahs now believe is essential for their survival in power.
So now we’re once again seeking to negotiate with the Islamic Republic, even as any game-changing option that would force Tehran to recalculate its nuclear equation is, in effect, off the table.
On another burning front, Obama, much to his credit, so far avoided Pyongyang’s honey trap of renewed negotiations, opting instead for conducting naval and military exercises and a display of solidarity with South Korea.
But here, too, such maneuvering won’t resolve anything much. As they too often say in Washington, the peninsula is “the land of no good option.”
Unlike academics, however, national leaders can’t rely on such mantras.
In the last century and before, overly active American presidents have been accused of interfering too much in the affairs of other nations. Some have been attacked for committing horrible blunders — think the Bay of Pigs, Vietnam and Iraq.
But the presidents who really set back America’s global agenda were the Jimmy Carters — those who were so versed in the possible global pitfalls and dangers that they acted too timidly or too late.
It has almost become an article of faith in some international circles (as well as in Washington and New York) that America will, as it should, reduce its global footprint. Except, we can’t afford to; it would make us poorer and less influential. Furthermore, the world will surely become a much darker place if the vacuum we leave behind is either filled by amoral, bottom-line-oriented superpowers like China, or — even worse — if no leadership replaces ours, leaving behind the kind of chaos only global terrorists can love.
Obama came into office with little experience in managing world affairs. Instead, his foreign-policy claim to fame was that the rich texture of his personal background — his Kenyan father, his early years in Indonesia, the Hawaiian exotics — was enough to give him much deeper knowledge about the globe than many of his predecessors.
But Obama’s a quick study, so let’s hope that by now he realizes that a multicultural personal history won’t buy him a page in any of the world’s history books.
So here’s to 2011: a year in which we make grand gestures around the world and commit to bold steps; a year in which America reminds the world that even as we’re on a temporary economic downturn, we aren’t withdrawing into our cocoon; a year in which our president reminds the world that in the tradition of one of history’s only benevolent superpowers, he’s here to present solutions, not to describe the problems.
Because even when America commits colossal foreign-policy mistakes, it eventually finds ways to correct them and make the world a better place. What we — and the world — can’t afford is being stumped.
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